There's a Mountain of Tofu in the Jianghu

In the waning years of the Great Xuan Dynasty, natural disasters and man-made calamities ravage the land, powerful clans scheme against one another, and foreign enemies lurk on every side.

Xu Wujiu, the most notorious wastrel in Lingzhou City and young master of the Yunmeng Trading Guild, loves two things above all: tofu pudding and watching a good spectacle.

One day, while watching salt smugglers clash in the street, he gets knocked over by Shi Xiaole, a refugee boy fleeing for his life, and drops his sugar figurine.

“Pay me back!” Xu Wujiu grabs the boy by his tattered collar.

Shi Xiaole shoves half a piece of hard, gritty barley bread into his hand. “I’m broke. It’s all I’ve got.”

That night, the sound of shattering roof tiles rings out over a side residence of the marquis’s estate. Shi Xiaole, trying to steal half a sack of rice, has caved in the roof above Xu Wujiu’s warm jade bath.

The young master, his wet hair dripping, looks at the dazed boy. “You’ve got skills. Want to join me on a big job? We’ll steal my father’s grain stores and use them to help the disaster victims.”

Shi Xiaole wipes his face. “Do you provide food? As long as I can eat my fill.”

And so the wastrel young master and the starving mine slave form the most hopeless band of Robin Hoods in history.

Until one day, Xu Wujiu ladles out a bowl of disaster-relief porridge and discovers that the rice is mixed with star-patterned steel grit, a specialty of the Yunmeng Trading Guild...

Meanwhile, the Canglong Jade Pendant at Shi Xiaole’s waist begins to glow faintly beneath its layer of dust.